At the bus depot, I was ready to get out of the truck to go buy my thirty day Greyhound pass and leave New York City, but Pat wasn't ready to return to his new home.
When he asked if I wanted to go to New Jersey, I told him that Gloria wouldn't be happy about him not returning that day. He insisted he was going to Bruce Springsteen territory whether I went or not, so I tagged along.
I don't know if we made it to Bruce's hometown of Freehold or to Asbury Park, memorialized with his first album cover, but wherever we went had something to do with Bruce. Maybe we went both of those places, or perhaps we just went to Jersey City.
All I remember for sure is that we eventually stayed at a neighborhood beer bar until closing time. We were too financially pressed to be drunk, probably nursing a pitcher over the course of a few hours while playing occasional games of pool. We didn't meet up with any young ladies or anything intriguing. We just hung out and talked about glory days and the future.
When we finally left around 2 AM, we found the night was cloaked in a heavy fog.
Pat did his best to find the turnpike on-ramp, but we just drove around and around. The streets were empty, and at about 3 AM, there didn't seem to be any cars on the turnpike above us either, although the fog made it hard to tell.
Without warning me, Pat turned onto an off-ramp, sending a deadly chill through me that put my senses on full alert. "What are you doing?" I shouted. At the top of the offramp, Pat pulled a U-Turn, and we were headed the right direction. "Are you crazy?
Fortunately, there still were no cars around. I stated the obvious. "We were lucky."
In a classic Pat response, he shook that off, saying, "You'd have to be crazy to be out driving on a night like this."
We eventually made it back to the bus stop, or actually around the corner from the bus stop, which because of one-way streets was close enough at the time, especially with the fresh experience of Pat's unique problem-solving techniques.
As I walked toward the bus stop, prostitutes kept asking things like, "Do you want to have a party, baby?" Eventually, there was literally a herd of whores all propositioning me at once. One with ruby red lips gave a price of twenty dollars, and then cut it to ten dollars. When I said no, she put her hands on her red sequined sides and gave me a shocked and insulted look I still remember to this day. "You don't want to have a party for ten dollars?" I shook my head and kept going. I had been in New York City too long.
